Brain Anatomy Narrative

Isabella Lacefield

NEW School

Neto

December 8, 2016

The Worst Days of My Life

I’ll never forget that night. I knew he was sick, but I didn’t know he was that sick. My husband and I thought it was the flu. Dylan’s had always been a very healthy boy, so we figured he had caught something at school, and we made him stay home until it passed. We thought the vomiting would eventually go away until we heard him a few days later.. It was three in the morning and I had never been more scared in my life. John and I woke up to the sound of our seven year old son violently vomiting. We ran to his bedroom to find him leaning over his bed, puking on the ground. My husband and I rushed over to him to console and calm him down, I noticed one of his eyes was almost looking up in his skull. He couldn’t stop retching. My husband’s eyes met mine. I knew it was time “We have to get him to a doctor, now!”

I had never been so scared in my life, until now. Now we wait, wait to hear what is wrong with our son. John and I hold hands silently, entrapped in our own grim thoughts, wondering what’s happening to our son. I stare at the white tile. I don’t even dare to look up because I am afraid. I don’t know what I’m afraid of, but  I know  I’ll have a good reason soon.

“Mr. and Mrs. Pierce?”

I looked up and saw the deliverer of my fears, the doctor. I didn’t speak because I didn’t want to know. I wanted a few more moments of everything being alright. No, I wanted to go back to a few weeks ago when Dylan was a happy and healthy boy.

“We’ve scanned him with an MRI and discovered that there is a medulloblastoma tumor on Dylan’s cerebellum.”

I felt my heart stop. I couldn’t speak, and I didn’t want to. I looked back down at the white tile and just stared at it. This couldn’t be happening, not to my little Dylan, he’s only 7. He doesn’t deserve this.

“Our son… has cancer?” my husband asked, keeping his face in his hands.

“I understand that this must be shocking to you. It is common for this kind of tumor to be found in children Dylan’s age. We can surgically remove it and he will have a good chance of surviving.”

No one responded, neither my husband or I could bear to look up.

“Has your son been experiencing problems with basic coordination skills, headaches, vomiting, drowsiness, changes in appetite, or unusual eye movements?” the doctor asked, keeping a sincere voice that really didn’t help.

My husband looked at him, “We thought he had the flu,” his voice cracked, his eyes teared up and he put his face back in his hands, shaking his head in dismay.

“That is completely understandable, a lot of parents do. This must be very difficult for you to take in, I’m going to leave you two alone. Take all the time you need.” The doctor quietly walked away, leaving us in the waiting room  wondering if our son would live to be eight years old.

I started to cry. It was the only thing I could do, my son has cancer. “Am… am,” My voice shook “ am I a...a bad mom?” I looked away from the white tile for the first time in what felt like an eternity, and saw John, his eyes glistening from tears. He was twisting his wedding ring on his finger anxiously.

“No, no, no, no, no,” He reached his arm over and pulled me in, “any mother would have done the same thing”. He held me tight as I sobbed into his chest.

“I should… should have k-known something w-was wrong.” I couldn’t stop the tears, John held me tighter and rubbed my back.

“You couldn’t have known.” He continued to rub big circles on my back as I slowly calmed down, “We need to be brave, for Dylan”.

I looked up at him and nodded. I had to think about our son, he needs John and I if he’s going to survive.

“The doctor said he has a good chance of surviving the surgery. Dylan’s a strong, brave boy, he can handle this.”

“Okay.”

Weeks had passed and Dylan had been through multiple radiation and chemo treatments. The doctor was planning on surgically removing the tumor tonight. I was scared. Dylan stayed strong through it all, he’s somehow managed to stay happy through all this. As I stand outside Dylan’s room and watch the doctors prep him for surgery through the window, I’m scared. There was always that chance of my son never waking up again, that one chance of my son dying. I can’t imagine life without him, he always brightens up my day and grounds me.

“Mrs. Pierce?” The doctor interrupted my thoughts and was standing next to me.

I cleared my throat and look over, obviously on the verge of crying. “Yes?”

“We’re about to take him up for surgery, do you want to walk with us to the operating room?”

I wiped my eyes “Yes, that sounds great.”

John and I walked on either side of the gurney memorizing every feature of Dylan’s face before they took him away.

“Why are you so sad, Mommy?” Dylan looked up at me, he was so cute, even with his little hair net on and the bags under his eyes.

I wiped my eyes again and plastered a smile on my face “I’m not sad, I’m just really going to miss you while you’re in surgery, that’s all.”

Dylan looked up at me with his big eyes “You’ll see me after, it’ll be over before you know it.”

I doubted that. “Alright honey” I said as I smiled down on him.

“I’m sorry Mr. and Mrs. Pierce, but this is as far as you can go.” The doctor interrupted as the gurney stopped at a big door.

Both John and I hugged Dylan as long and as tight as we could, I inhaled his scent and held onto it for as long as possible before I would say goodbye. “I love you.” we said to Dylan.

“I love you too.” Dylan said as the doctors began to roll him away to the operating room. “See you soon” he shouted before the doors closed behind him.

I felt the world stop. That might have been the last time I will ever see my son. A nurse came and escorted John and I to the waiting room where we waited. It was the longest I had ever waited for anything in my life. We sit there in silence waiting for either joyous news or devastating, earth shattering news. John every so often would go get us coffee and walk around but I never moved. When I was on the verge of sleep, John shook me awake.

“The doctor’s coming.”

Works Cited

“Medulloblastoma” American Brain Tumor Association, http://www.abta.org/brain-tumor-information/types-of-tumors/medulloblastoma.html?referrer=https://www.google.com/

Vapiwala,Neha & Plastaras, John P. “All About Medulloblastoma” OncoLink, June 5, 2016.

https://www.oncolink.org/cancers/pediatric/information/brain-tumors/all-about-medulloblastoma

Iron Chef - Tooth Decay

The acid in soda attacks your teeth for 20 minutes after the first sip. The sugars in the soda interact with the bacteria in your mouth to to cause the acid. Every soda, sugar-free or regular contains there own acids. But it's not just soda, smoothies with high levels of sugar can promote decay too. To test this we made two experiments to find out how much these drinks really effect your teeth. We were given two ingredients, Coca Cola and a Bolthouse Green Smoothie. We wanted to experiment with human teeth and see how both drinks affected human teeth. Our claim for this experiment was that the natural sugar wouldn't cause as much damage as the drink with artificial sugar. We then wanted to conduct another experiment to further explore the bacterial growth in someone's mouth after they drink these two beverages.

    Our hypothesis for the first experiment was, if human teeth are placed in a cup of coca cola, green juice, water, coffee and lemon juice for 14 days, then the tooth that was in the cup of coca cola will have the largest increase in weight because the coca cola contains the most corn syrup, which can cause a lot of plaque and buildup on teeth if not brushed frequently. Our second hypothesis for the second experiment was, if a person drinks 20 ml of the Bolthouse green smoothie then they will have more natural bacterial growth in their mouth compared the same person when they drink 20 ml of the Coca Cola because the soda has artificial sugars and the Bolthouse drink contains natural sugar.

Here are the materials for our first experiment:

• 15 Teeth

• 15 Plastic cups

• 6 tablespoons of Coca Cola soda

• 6 tablespoons of liquid coffee

• 6 tablespoons of listerine

• 6 tablespoons of water

• 6 tablespoons of green smoothie

• 1 Scale

• Gloves

• Measuring cups

Here are the materials for our second experiment: 

• 80 ml of Listerine

• 12 Q-tips

• 80 ml of Coca Cola

• 80 ml of Bolthouse drink

• 4 Test subject (Two girls Two boys)

• 1 Microscope  

• 12 Agar plate

• 12 Cups

• 1 Timer/Stopwatch

   

The procedures for our first experiment is:

1. Fill 3 small plastic cups with 2 tablespoons of Coca Cola
2. Repeat the first step, but instead of filling the cup with the soda, use the water, Listerine, Bolthouse drink, and coffee
3. Dry each tooth gently with a paper towel and then weigh each tooth before they are placed into the liquid, record the number in the chart created below on the doc and take pictures of the teeth
4. Place one tooth in each of the 15 cups
5. Wait 24 hours and then weigh each tooth to see how the beverage affected it
6. Record the new weight of the tooth and put it back into the same cup it came from
7. Weigh each tooth every day for 2 weeks and record all
8. weights in the table below.

 The procedures for the second experiment is:

1. Have each test subject clean their mouth with 10ml Listerine for 60 seconds because it takes listerine about 45 seconds to kill bacteria.
2. Have them rinse their mouth with water for 30 seconds to clear out the Listerine.
3. Have the test subjects put 20 ml of Bolthouse in their mouth for 30 seconds, making sure to coat their tongue, cheek, and teeth, and then have them swallow it.
4. After 30min, swab the test subject’s teeth with a Q-tip.
5. Then swab the q tip onto the agar plate.
6. See how much bacteria has grown after 20 min. Then check after 2 weeks.
7. Look at each of the swabs under the microscope to check how much bacteria grew in the agar plate.
8. Repeat steps 1-5 for 5 more test subjects to get more accurate results.

Weight in Grams Throughout 14 Days:

Tooth  #	Day 1 Oct. 17	Day 2 Oct. 18	Day 3 Oct. 19	Day 4 Oct. 20	Day 5 Oct. 21	Day 8 Oct. 24	Day 9 Oct. 25	Day 10 Oct. 26	Day 11 Oct. 27	Day 12 Oct. 28
1	1	2	2	1	2	2	1	N/A	2	1
2	1	2	2	1	2	3	3	N/A	2	1
3	1	3	2	1	3	2	2	N/A	3	2
4	1	2	2	1	1	2	2	N/A	2	1
5	1	2	3	1	2	2	2	N/A	2	1
6	1	3	2	1	3	3	1	N/A	2	2
7	1	1	1	2	2	3	2	N/A	3	2
8	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	N/A	1	2
9	1	1	1	2	2	2	2	N/A	2	2
10	1	3	3	1	2	3	2	N/A	2	3
11	1	2	1	1	2	3	1	N/A	2	1
12	1	3	2	1	2	1	2	N/A	2	3
13	1	3	3	1	2	2	2	N/A	2	2
14	2	3	3	1	3	2	3	N/A	2	2
15	1	2	3	1	2	2	2	N/A	1	2

Coca Cola  Coffee  Green Juice  Water  Listerine

Here are the teeth before the experiment begun:

Here we are preparing for and commencing the experiment:

Here are the teeth after 24 hours of being in each drink (from left to right) Coca Cola, Coffee, Green Smoothie, Water, and Listerene

Here are the teeth in the middle of the 2 weeks (Day 8)

Here are the teeth on the last day of the experiment (Day 12)

To wrap up the experiment,
Our claim was that the teeth in a drink with natural sugar wouldn't be as damaged as the ones in artificial sugar. Based on the pictures it is obvious that the ones in the smoothie and water have stayed in the same condition throughout the entire experiment and the ones in coca cola have a lot of damage. Based on the pictures, the teeth in coca cola have a lot more build up and plaque along with staining. The teeth in coffee didn't have a lot of plaque, just some staining. The teeth in the smoothie had almost no change because the smoothie has all natural sugars. The teeth in water had almost no change as well because the only thing in water is hydrogen and oxygen, there is no sugars. The Listerine stained the teeth a neon blue because there is a lot of food coloring in it and in the end there was a little but of plaque but not a horrible amount. 

Our original hypothesis was, If human teeth are placed in a cup of coca cola, green juice, water, coffee and Listerine, then the tooth that was in the cup of coca cola will have the largest increase in weight because the coca cola contains the most corn syrup. Our data does support this based on the pictures. There were definitely some errors in our experiment, the beaker was turned off in the middle of our experiment. The weight was interestingly inconsistent with our other data so my group thinks that maybe some of them weren't fully dried before weighing or maybe there was something wrong with the scale. In conclusion, the drinks with artificial sugars or sweeteners caused the most damage to the teeth than the ones with natural sugar.